Kristopher Tate took issue with my assessment that Zooomr’s new release is just more half-baked bug ridden promises than a photo site…

Vincent, thanks for posting your thoughts on the matter.

I’m very good at that.

Although, maybe you should actually ask our users what they think. I’m pretty sure that they’ve been (and still are) very happy.

Are they? It seems pretty quiet over there these days. In fact, some of them are so happy they went and formed a Zooomr in Exile group on Flickr and meetup regularly in the lobby and in the Zooomr in Exile group on Photophlow.com. You’re right. They must be thrilled.

I personally think you have a problem with any site that isn’t based in the US. When I posted about our photowalk in Japan, you decided to criticize it on Twitter — how childish.

Are you kidding me? Seriously? You think I have a problem with Zooomr not working and its management heading in the completely wrong direction because the site is in Japan? That’s a good way to deflect, Kristopher, but that doesn’t address the problem in any capacity. Here’s the Tweet in question.

Oh cool… The Zooomr folks are celebrating their 2008 launch by taking a break from it and photowalking. Shouldn’t it WORK first?

I’m sorry, but what about that has to do with Japan? I never even mentioned Japan, or the fact that your site wasn’t in the United States, but that the damn thing still doesn’t, by your own admission, fully work. What are you celebrating? Getting enough of it working so you can do what you did with Mark III and drag it out another year telling people what’s coming in the 2009 release?

When Mark III Launched, we had a lot of stuff to fix and a lot of things to deal with. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the right time to go onto your podcast or any other podcast, for that matter.

Fine, but after promises and promises and us promoting the site and saying good stuff about you (not undeservedly, but we did have somewhat rosy glasses on because we thought you guys were cool) you just let us hang out to dry and left us looking like idiots after we promised you guys would be on. Numerous e-mails went unreturned (I can reprint those here, if you’d like) and we went from friends of the site who you thanked for promoting Zooomr to two shlubs not even worth an e-mail. I can’t thank you enough for that. Incidentally, during this time that you didn’t have time to speak to me or my cohost, you did spend a shitload of time watching TV, listening to music, drinking beer, and dancing on Zooomr TV. You’re right; I have no idea how you would’ve pencilled us in among all that important work.

Zipline has been the best thing that has ever come out of Zooomr. It’s recent activity + your friends photos in realtime — and it even lets you touch-bases with your friends at the same time.

And you developed it at the expense of… Let’s face it Kris. Every minute you were working on that is a minute you weren’t working on something that was broken after the move from Mark II to Mark III, which is going back to my point that Zooomr lost its focus with Zipline. You didn’t get the API together, meaning people who hated the web upload were screwed into using it. Geotagging was hit and miss. Search by color? Never worked 100%. Selling photos? I thought you guys were going to be the largest user-generated stock photography company in the world! Where’d that go? None of that was worked on, but you’re right. Zipline works great. I believe that’s the point I made in my prior post.

We released Zipline at the same time Twitter and Jaiku were just coming into view and had the feature in development after we launched our second release (way before jaiku & twitter. ever existed).

Yeah… Okay… You just launched it a year later than Jaiku… I get it…

Unfortunately for people like you, you’ve made your name on exploiting small nothings.

Oh really? Like what, for example? I won’t go into the fact that you made your name overpromising and underdelivering. We’ll let the world decide whose is better, but I promise you if you asked people outside of San Francisco who I was and who you are, I’d win. Hands down.

Zooomr has its share of bugs and issues and we are addressing that within the community.

Which is why you shouldn’t be launching new versions when you haven’t worked out the bugs in the old one.

If you actually care about Zooomr, come and join us. It’s lots of fun working together. You might even enjoy it.

I used to care about Zooomr, but with release after released of half-assed work with non functioning features and undelivered promises, I stopped caring, and it was apparent that you had also. It just. Doesn’t. Work. Anymore. That’s why I’m annoyed. Roll the clock back a few years, tack on some new features to the original release, and suddenly Zooomr is a damn good service. As it is right now, though, it’s slow, unusable, and buggy, which is the same condition it’s been in since Mark III (and to some extent Mark II).

Lastly, Zooomr isn’t trying to be a US only website — we’ve been global from day one, and expanding our reach through technologies like mobile are very important.

Expanding your reach? There’s an old saying, and I think it applies here. Make sure your belt is tightened before you stretch out your arms. I think that applies in spades here.

I hope you’ve learned a lot in these last few days.

Oh yeah, it’s been a real education.

All the best,

kristopher tate
cto & founder - zooomr

Whatever dude.

I’ve been checking out the progress on Zooomr from time to time and when I notice something that strikes me as odd, out of place, or not working, it just reminds me of the fact that the site isn’t ready for prime time.

I need to take you back a few years to when I first discovered Zooomr. The beauty of it was obvious. It was a fully functional alternative to flickr, one of the single worst sites I can’t stop using. Zooomr had no community to speak of, but I didn’t care as much because despite it being one of flickr’s best features, the community is what I hate the most about it.

Their philosophy was simple. Exploring the world through photos. For bloggers, it was even better. If you were a blogger and put a bit of code on your page that the site could detect, you were in. Unlimited. For free. What could be better? While flickr was charging $24 a year for a “pro” account, Zooomr was giving them away in exchange for getting exposure on blogs by embedding pictures.

Then came Mark II. Mark II was the second launch of Zooomr, and really turned it into a powerhouse of a site. Geotagging was added, putting it way ahead of the competition, because it was actually integrated into the site; something no one else was doing at the time. Zooomr looked a lot like flickr, but feature for feature it was on a whole other level. Some minor interface glitches and a ton of down time were normal, but many people saw the potential.

Then they added what can probably universally be called the worst feature in photosharing site history: The stupid-assed Zipline. Think Twitter for a photosharing site. Why would anyone want this? Your guess is as good as mine, but if anything it distracts from what the site is about. Photos. That’s what got worked on. Things were still buggy and glitchy, but improvements to Zipline were readily coming in a steady stream.

Then came the announcement we’d all been waiting for. Mark III was coming. A revolution in photo sharing. Photo selling. Communities and groups. Searching by color. You name it, it was going to have it. Zooomr was going to be a model for photo sites everywhere.

Then came the downtime. They wanted a few hours as they moved over our photos. The time spread from hours into days into weeks. Uncov covered the whole thing:

Rule #1 of web application deployment: always have a backup ready. Why in the hell would you take down the current version just to get out the new release? Can you not walk and chew gum at the same time? Developers who actually know what they are doing would have released their “Mark III” in parallel to the existing system just in case the deployment got destroyed. The worst case scenario then is to simply switch back to the current system and keep users happy. But no you, Kristopher with a K Tate, chose to take everything down without a plan and were convinced you could get the new service up within 24 hours. Your first mistake: thinking that going down for 24 hours was acceptable. Your second mistake: failing miserably.

Then it came back online. 500 errors on photo clicks. Geotagging still isn’t working 100% reliably. No selling of photos yet. The search by color thing? Can’t find it. Even something as simple as view counts for your photos just came back online a mere two days ago. TWO DAYS. A photo site that can’t tell you how many views your photo got? I won’t even get into the Z-mail spam issue.

The final straw, of course, was when Zooomr moved to Japan. According to Kris Tate, they couldn’t get funding in the US because investors saw Zooomr as too close to flickr to warrant funding. They go to Japan, take the entire site down as they ship the hard drives overseas (some of which didn’t even make it there right away) and then begin rebuilding the site with a heavy mobile and social focus, which of course means that yet again, they’re distracted. Now, understandably, the site has to be tailored for the Japanese investors that saved the company and in Japan, mobile is king, but in reality, all they did was screw US users out of reliability and spend a lot of time working on features that people in this country (where they got their start) really don’t need or want.

As I’ve come across these major shortcomings / failures / priority problems, I’ve been posting about them on Twitter. Frankly, I think they’re hilarious beyond any comprehension of the term. What kills me, though, is the decline of the site and watching its features fail more and more with each passing new release. Things that weren’t broken two years ago are iffy and dicey now and the site’s reliability is, to put it gently, a joke. This is not the way to launch a new product.

I should note that during a few episodes of Information Salad, we plugged the hell out of Zooomr. This was done for multiple reasons. 1. At the time, we truly believed in Kris and Thomas to get the site to a whole new level. 2. We were both tired of flickr. 3. We considered them friends of the show. 4. We were trying to make a difference.

We arranged with Thomas Hawk and Kristopher Tate to have an interview as soon as Mark III launched. We were basically going to give them a pulpit to talk about their new product. Again, it was something we believed in, so we weren’t exactly selling out to do it. Multiple e-mails went into the nether and we never had them on the show despite pumping it up and promoting it for roughly 3 weeks.

Way to run a business boys, and I think it’s a great idea to alienate ardent supporters at the same time. Those fans can be so pesky.

So yeah, I no longer believe in Zooomr or the company. Yesterday, I got a random message on Twitter from Kristopher asking me what my beef with Zooomr was, so I laid it out rather simply for him (these are in reverse chronological order because that’s the way twitter displays them):

@kristopher Maybe you guys need to reset your focus on the Photos and stop trying to be twitter with pictures. Start there. about 19 hours ago from web in reply to kristopher

@kristopher: You got a lot of good will and great publicity for free and then ignored me. Whatever, but don’t get all indignant w/me. about 19 hours ago from web in reply to kristopher

@kristopher: Frankly, for all the promises of a chat when Mk III launched, you guys left me out to dry, so don’t tell me to go on my way. about 19 hours ago from web in reply to kristopher

@kristopher A; It’s not the up and down, it’s the basic stuff not working. b: You and TH standing me up has nothing to do with the site. about 19 hours ago from web in reply to kristopher

@vincenzof I’ll be the first one to admit that we have bugs to fix; If you want to help out, please do — If not, please go on your way. about 20 hours ago from web in reply to vincenzof

@vincenzof: We made you look like an idiot? I guess the same applies to Twitter going up and down sometimes? Do they also make you an idiot? about 20 hours ago from web in reply to vincenzof

@kristopher Your turn. Tell me why I SHOULDN’T have a beef with Zooomr. And… Go… about 21 hours ago from web in reply to kristopher

@kristopher And then of course you and TH stood me up for two months on my show after I pimped the hell out of Zooomr. So yeah, I’m pissed. about 21 hours ago from web in reply to kristopher

@kristopher You guys made me look like an idiot for recommending it to my friends by breaking it and never fixing some basic stuff. about 21 hours ago from web in reply to kristopher

@kristopher My beef with Zooomr is that Mark III promised a lot and underdelivered, and 2008 is no better; to put it simply. about 21 hours ago from web in reply to kristopher

@vincenzof, yo — what’s your beef with Zooomr? What doesn’t work that isn’t already ID’d on trac.zooomr.com ? 03:33 AM March 19, 2008 from web in reply to vincenzof Icon_star_empty

It’s a shame. I had high hopes for Zooomr, but it would appear to me that they’re nothing more than a casualty of the me-too end of Web 2.0.

I wanna get this photo into JPEG Magazine… Can you help me out by heading over and voting?

Thanks!

(Voting ends on 6/7)

Many people have asked me why I paid for Calico when I also paid for Photoshop CS3 and CS3 has a great panorama tool. Now that is true, and the pano tool in Photoshop is enormously improved, but let’s not kid ourselves. There’s no comparison between what Calico does versus what Photoshop CS3 does.

Here’s Photoshop CS2:

Note the unevenly exposed sky and the discontinuity in the building and on the fence (some of the fence was broken, but it’s less than what’s here.

Here’s Photoshop CS3:

Note how the exposure in the sky is more even, but the building looks like it’s about to collapse to the right.

Here’s Calico:

Aside from the lens correction that Photoshop does the blending is significantly better in the Calico version. It seems better at finding details and matching points. CS3 is probably fine for most people, but even though Calico isn’t free, it’s a no-brainer as far as I’m concerned.

Technorati Tags: calico, photoshop, panorama, photomerge

I’ve been writing a lot about flickr lately, mainly because their attitude seems to have changed from a folksy community run by cool people to corporate storefront run by people who want you to think they’re the same folks as always and the fact that they’re shilling for the whims of the parent company is irrelevant. It sucks. Their attitude sucks. The people on there, save for a few I correspond with, suck. The whole damn site has hit the toilet particular with the folks who love flickr and pounce on you anytime you dare criticize the great overlords dictating the show.

There’s very little room to be unhappy with anything including the forced switchover today. That’s right, today is the day that if you don’t switch to a login with a Yahoo! account, you can no longer log into flickr until you do so. Why? Well, according to Stewart, it wasn’t foisted upon them by Yahoo! corporate; they decided to do it so it would be easier to make flickr “better” (so far making flickr better has included exciting new features like limiting tags on photos and limiting the number of contacts you can have).

If you ever have to wonder where that attitude of “flickr can do no wrong, we’re really just nice guys and our corporate owners aren’t pulling the strings” comes from, well, look no further than Stewart Butterfield… I came across this post in a thread today with a great moneyshot in it:

And we do work very hard and in good faith try to do the best possible job and make the right decisions. Personally, if I ever felt we were being forced by highers-up to do something bad or wrong (which has never happened, by the way), I’d fight it. And if I didn’t win, I’d leave. Life is big and I have plenty of options: I’m not going to burn chunks of my life doing things I think are wrong. With that, a few points:

First, I am an employee of Yahoo! Inc., as is everyone else who works on Flickr. We work out of Yahoo! offices and go to the dentist on Yahoo! health plans. My boss is a Yahoo! employee and so are the people who, for example, replace failed hard drives in our data centers or do our budget forecasting.

This has been true for nearly two years, and it hasn’t been kept secret. If you have philosophical, moral, political or aesthetic reasons that prohibit you from using Yahoo! products or services in good conscience, then you shouldn’t use Flickr. Flickr is a Yahoo! product. There are plenty of other options out there, and some of them are even good

If you don’t like it, leave.

Nice one, Stewart. Yeah, you haven’t changed one bit. It’s just the same old flickr, only instead of being run by Ludicorp, it’s being run by a gigantic failure of a company.

Thomas and Kristopher just can’t finish Zooomr Mk III fast enough for my tastes. Today is launch day, and frankly if you would rather be a part of a service where it doesn’t take 5 years to give you one new feature, you may want to jump on in and give it a go. I know I will. After all, I don’t like flickr and their new “attitude” anymore, so I think I’ll follow Stewart’s advice and just not use flickr.

I really wish things would’ve turned out differently, but maybe this is for the best. You know, getting out before Yahoo! decided flickr wasn’t making enough money and Stewart and the rest of them started telling us how the flash ads, adwords, and other “monetization” features that would have to be implemented were for the best and not forced on them by Yahoo!.

It’s only a matter of time.

Technorati Tags: flickr, zooomr, stewart butterfield

Let’s start with “Striatic’s a prick” and work our way backward.

Seriously. If this isn’t emblematic of why flickr sucks eggs lately, I really don’t know what is.

Over the weekend, numerous threads popped up, each one more strange than the last. In the end we had threads like “Post your 34th most interesting photo that’s not one of your typical photos.” For me, for example, it would be the 34th most interesting photo that wasn’t a NYC street photo. It got people thinking about their photos and even got them to think outside their boundaries.

There were a lot of these asking for such esoteric things as your 8th most favorited photo.

Overall, lots of photos were submitted, people enjoyed it, etc.

So what does the almighty Striatic, flickr Rockstar do?

He shuts the thread, of course.

i’ve locked all the ‘nth most viewed’ threads except one.

the one i didn’t lock was left unlocked because i think it actually asked an interesting question in an indirect manner.

anyhow, the threads i’ve locked could be considered either self promotional or not leading to novel discussion. take your pick.

if you like ‘numbers threads’ you ought to start a ‘numbers threads group’ and start inviting people to it.

Self-promotional? Sorry, but isn’t all of flickr’s group ecosystem self-promotional?

And the discussion wasn’t “novel?” What the hell?

And don’t even get me started on the whole “if you don’t like it, start your own group” thing.

Jesus, what an asshole.

Unfortunately, this is what flickr has become. A clique of petulant little children with stars in their names or titles after their names telling the rest of the site what to do. While flickr Central isn’t an “official” flickr group, it does sort of serve that purpose as the most trafficked general discussion group on flickr. It had become, in some ways, a state-sanctioned monopoly. Along with the tone change of flickr lately, comes crap like this. Threads that are purely about photography with no ambiguity whatsoever are locked because someone with an itchy finger decides he doesn’t think it contributes value to flickr.

Sorry, but doesn’t the fact that it’s photography, that lots of people have shared their photos, and the fact that it made people look at their photos differently count for anything?

Apparently not because in the new world of flickr, they think you can have too many contacts, tag your photos too much, and your threads in a group can be shut down just because some jerk doesn’t like your thread and doesn’t think it adds to the service.

Quote of the day from the “lock” thread:

Striatic, I disagree with locking the “2nd and 4th-Most Interesting and 8th-Most Viewed Photos”. There were a lot of posters there and everyone was enjoying themselves. That thread was 100% about photography, and I discovered and favourited several photos that I would have not seen otherwise.

Nope. Enjoyment will not be tolerated, Mark. The great Striatic has spoken, dammit!

And, of course, such relevant threads as “American Idol,” “Daylight Savings Time“, and “Pedophilia: It’s the new terrorism” all remain open, and all of them are obviously related to photography. *COUGH COUGH*

I can’t wait until something I can’t say happens so I can rescue my photos from this shithole.

Technorati Tags: flickr, striatic, balls

The best part of this video is that it clearly demonstrates that the security drones and rent-a-cops overreacted to Ms. Simpson having her picture taken. If they even try to claim that these photographers were a threat, we have the video that clearly states otherwise.

What kind of dope gets into a brawl with a bunch of cameras trained on them?

I hope everyone that was thrown to the ground sues the hell out of Ms. Simpson and her entourage.

Video after the jump.

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Yahoo! has been taking a ton of heat from the old skool members of flickr with the announcement of their “new and improved” changes which include limiting tags and contacts (nice improvements, huh?). Speculation has been flying back and forth about why they did what they did, and what it all means.

Valleywag seems to be under the impression that these changes were made because there’s an impending move to ditch Yahoo! Photos.

Time to upgrade this from rumor to unannounced fact — that’s our bet, anyway. “Consolidation” was the word seized upon most in Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse’s “Peanut Butter Manifesto.” And consolidating the duplicate services provided by post-acquisition Flickr and Yahoo Photos makes sense. Flickr founder Stewart Butterfield denied there would be any merging, but that doesn’t rule out “consolidation” by way of elimination.

Read the rest here. it’s a plausible theory, although Valleywag doesn’t provide any actual sources, it’s speculation that seems to be educated based on the past and their current course of action. It’ll be interesting to see which way this one shakes out because if this is true, expect an influx of awful photos, a pile of swiped photos from other sites, and other garbage that flickr has managed to stay remarkably free of all this time.

Thomas Hawk is also not 100% sure this is going to happen…

First, Yahoo’s been taking a pretty painful beating from their “old skool” members in the past few weeks over their (in my opinion bad) decision to force “old skool” Flickr users to merge into Yahoo. For some “old skool” users this is no big deal — emphatically, no big deal — but there are many other “old skool” members who are very upset about this to the point of canceling their flickr service.

From a timing perspective, it would seem off to now try to push another surely controversial decision with the current “old skool” users.

Even if Flickr wanted to do this, probably better to wait later into the year when hopefully more of the bitterness over this recent change blows over.

Second, Yahoo Photos and Flickr are two totally different places, with totally different communities. Flickr is an edgier place where the focus on social sharing of fine art photography is extremely important. I’m just not sure that a merged Yahoo Photos Flickr does anything at all to enhance or make Flickr a more interesting place.

Only time will tell… It’ll be interesting to see if this is something the Peanut Butter company has coming or if it’s something we’re just being overly paranoid about.

Technorati Tags: yahoo, flickr, photos, yahoo photos

Wow…

flickr really pissed off a lot of people in one quick shot.

In one post on flickr news they:

1. Announced that by March 15th you either switch to the new authentication scheme or you can’t use flickr anymore.

2. Announced that contacts will be limited to 3,000 (previously, there was only a theoretical limit of around 10,000 if I remember correctly).

3. Announced that tags on photos are now limited to 75.

At first blush, those aren’t really a big deal. In reality, for many of us, they represent flickr moving in a direction that just sucks.

Thomas Hawk, CEO of Zooomr and avid flickr user (not to mention a friend of mine), is none too pleased either.

More telling than his reaction, though, is the reaction of others on the forums to the news. In fact, the most telling one comes from my other friend, Vidiot who wrote:

“I guess what I find jarring is the shift in tone, even if it is but an infinitesimal one. Today marks the first time that to me, Flickr has ever felt like something less than that community I bought into (literally), and more like a service I pay for. And that’s a sad realization.”

*sigh*

Oh yeah… One more…

hodgepodge: “I’m sure that the Flickr staff love their creation. But they love the big fat check that Yahoo gave to them much more. They didn’t make Flickr as a labor of love, they made it hit the startup lottery (which they did, admirably I might add). That doesn’t mean that they don’t care about their creation, but don’t kid yourselves into thinking that because you helped build it by being early adopters and advocates that they really care about you. This is clearly about money; saving money on maintenance, and making money off of advertising.”

It got me thinking, actually.

I’m wondering if the announcement at the end of last year about the upload limit being removed for pro accounts was simply to soften the blow of what they knew was coming?

Or, as some of the forum folks seem to be thinking, did Yahoo! not even care whether or not they pissed people off?

Who knows… All I know is I’m looking elsewhere for online photo storage.

Technorati Tags: flickr, photos, photography, mess, disaster, yahoo!

Someone wrote an awesome review of the Canon Powershot SD-800 IS. I wonder who that was?

Oh right.

Me.

Technorati Tags: reviews, photography, canon, digital media thoughts

AllofMP3 is very nonplussed by the RIAA threats its facing and has informed the RIAA that they can file suits until they’re blue in the face, but since they’re in Russia they’re all meaningless. Good. It’s about time someone stood up to those scumbags at the RIAA and the hypocrites at the record labels.

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I hate doctor offices

Originally uploaded by VincenzoF.

Doesn’t this look like fun?

Testing Pickle

I love this picture, so it was only natural that I would use it to test out Pickle.

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